Fake NGOs, fake jackpot, bogus firm in Dong Nai

On March 16 alone, four swindling cases involving fake international officers, bogus company and over VND500 million (US$24,000) occurred in four communes of Tan Phu district in the southern Dong Nai province, readers told Tuoi Tre.

All the cheats were carried out right at the victims’ houses in Phu Thanh, Phu Xuan, Phu Lam and Thanh Son communes.

At 10 a.m. that day, two women came to the house of N.V.K., 79, in Phu Lam commune’s Phuong Mai hamlet, and claimed themselves to be international charity activists.

They offered the aged man a lucky scratch card and after he scratched the card to expose the numbers printed on it , they said he won a cash prize of VND450 million (US$21,500).

They then prepared a report on his winning the “prize” and said he had to declare his assets as a condition for receiving it.

The ‘lucky’ man told them he had VND20 million (US$960) and 0,5 tael (0.6 ounce) of gold and showed the assets to the two women, who then left the house bringing with them all these assets.

With the same trick, at noon the same day, they appropriated VND10 million ($480) and 1.3 taels of gold from the family of Mrs. N.T.H., 67, in Thanh Son commune’s Cay Dau hamlet.

L.V.T. later found himself a victim of two swindlers including a man and a woman.

On March 14, he gave them VND5 million ($240) as a deposit for a contract with a ‘manufacturer’ of anti-mosquito products. Under the ‘contract’, some advertisement posters would be posted at his house and he would be paid VND3 million ($143) per month in return.

But on March 16, after a man asked to buy such products, T. phoned the man to whom he gave the money but no one answered the phone.

Senior Lieutenant Colonel Tran Tuan Trieu, head of the Tan Phu district police, said the swindlers had taken advantage of both the gullibility and greediness of their victims.